Deeplinks Blog posts about NSA Spying

The debate over telecom immunity has now spanned almost two years. When the first proposal to grant immunity to the telecoms was introduced in Congress, in September of 2006, no one thought the fight would last this long.

As we ponder the bizarre spectacle of a Congress that has willingly and repeatedly rolled over on the Bush administration's expansive claims of executive power, it is worth remembering that at one time it appeared that there would be hardly any resistance at all to the question of whether to grant immunity to the telecoms that participated in Bush's illegal warrantless wiretapping program.

In a move that I can only describe as cowardice, Congress just passed legislation meant to immunize telephone companies for their illegal, disloyal, and irresponsible behavior. EFF has been fighting against telecom immunity, and we need your help to bring the fight to the next level:

http://secure.eff.org/wiretapping

Two and a half years ago, EFF sued AT&T on behalf of its customers, seeking to hold the telecom giant responsible for its craven complicity in the White House's illegal warrantless wiretapping program.

Since then, the phone companies and their allies in Washington have spent tens of millions of dollars lobbying Congress to grant them retroactive immunity. They ran ridiculous fear-mongering attack ads against any politician who dared to oppose them. President Bush threatened to veto any bill that allowed EFF's lawsuit to continue.

The final Senate debate on the dangerously flawed FISA Amendments Act began this morning. Senator Feingold spoke at length in favor of Senator Dodd's amendment to strip retroactive immunity from the bill:

...Granting retroactive immunity under these circumstances will undermine any new laws that we pass regarding government surveillance. If we want companies to follow the law in the future, it sends a terrible message, and sets a terrible precedent, to give them a "get out of jail free" card for allegedly ignoring the law in the past...

Former intelligence officer Daniel Ellsberg, the whistleblower who in the early 1970s released the Pentagon Papers, has spoken out against the Senate's version of FISA reform and warrantless wiretapping. In this video posted on Boing Boing Gadgets, he reminds viewers that all members of Congress have taken an oath to uphold the Constitution.

I have to say that no senator, Republican or Democrat, should be voting for this Senate bill. Not one. Everyone who does so is in fact, I would say, violating his or her oath to defend the Constitution. But they can do better than that.

A few months back, SF Gate cartoonist Mark Fiore introduced his character Snuggly, the Security Bear, with a brilliant take on telecom immunity. Now, Snuggly is back, and he has a few words to say about "compromise."